I'm a Pakistani-Canadian who blogs about sexuality in South Asia, religion & politics.
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Sunday, February 19, 2012

As promised, here are my follow up questions with Bilal from the last post. Theres so much to be said about his second set of answers. Through his words you feel elated that he has found himself, found a place of acceptance.... but you also feel the sadness... in the fact that he can't truly be himself around everyone he loves... You can sense that there might still be scars from the fear he felt when he was younger.. the fear of being singled out...

The scars may still be there, but they make him who he is....

His words are honest..and they peel back layers of culture and religion...of society and acceptance...to leave behind just a person.

Where did you grow up? I notice you say ‘moved to London’ … so did u live in Pakistan before that? And if so, how old were you when you moved to the west? Did that make a difference in you accepting your own sexual identity?

In short - I was born in Lahore, and moved to London at a very young age, but moved back to Lahore when i was about 7/8, and lived there till i was 19, which a majority of my formative years were in Pakistan.

I cannot tell you how much i wanted to move back to London when i was 19 (it had always been agreed i would study at University in England), just to get away from everything. I had avoided feelings till then, too scared to like anyone, to show too much of a particular emotion, in case i got singled out (the thought of which scared the shit out of me).

Saying that moving to London was the catalyst in making me comfortable with myself would be the most accurate way to describe it really - of course i didnt feel comfortable with my sexuality once i landed at Heathrow, but having a culture which was so much more accepting, helped an immense amount. I could finally breathe, be more of myself.

Why wasn’t sex good the first time? When you say you were thinking too much about it, what do you mean… did you feel guilty? Did you feel it was wrong to have homosexual sex? Or was it just the regular jitters that anyone might get the first time around?

Haha..Truthfully: Sex was painful the first time because the bastard (still a dear, dear friend mind you) DIDNT USE ENOUGH LUBE - I was bottoming you see, and oh dear god, sweet Jesus in heaven above it hurt, but it got better.

During sex there wasnt much right and wrong about it really, i wasnt really thinking "Shit, im so going to hell for doing it with a man" it was more anxiety about 'doing it right' (as you so rightly pointed out - first time jitters)

Afterwards was when it sunk in when i went home the next day - I felt like i was keeping a secret from my family (not that id tell them in the first place - I HAD SEXXXXXX) but ya know, i felt like I'd have to tell them ONE day, an they would think i was..'dirty' for lack of a better word, for engaging in such apparently sinful activities!!

When you say you have no intention of marrying a woman just to please your family, how do you think you will tackle the issue when your Parents start expecting it of you?

You know what, im not entirely sure how i will tell my parents, or how i will tackle this issue, just that ill cross the bridge when i come to it. Right now ive told them im not getting married because marriage in my family is cursed haha...

I mean i have 6 sisters (No, im not gay because i have six sisters...haha), One is happily married, two are divorced, one is on a trial separation, another in the process of a divorce, while the third is content to play the 'other woman' in a relationship. My parents are divorced, i havent seen my father in about 4 years, not that i care to either - that man is a complete prick.

There are multiple divorces and remarriages on my fathers side of the family. In fact ive lost count.

Do you think you will ever actually ‘come out’to your family? Or will you just avoid discussing topics like marriage?

Eventually. I hope to. I dont like lying to them. I love them immensely, and it hurts so very much that i cant be myself with them, even more so, the thought that they would disown me if they knew.

Does anyone in your family know? Siblings,Cousins? Is there any family member that you are particularly close to and wish to tell but haven’t? How do you think they would react?

Oh a lot has happened since we last emailed each other...haha

Ive come out to:

2 Sisters,

3 Friends

1 nephew

Sisters 1 is..in disbelief, but i supposed i have to give her time...I didnt exactly take a night to believe it myself.

Sister 2 was a disappointment, because I was closer to her.

In short, she wants me to stay IN the closet, never tell the parents, and lead a double life, never hear about how my love life is going, whilst fully prepared to discuss the quandaries of her love live. She disclosed this in a 40 minute conversation over the phone as if reading me the menu for a lunch she was planning. Sort of pissed me off, needless to say.

My friends were GREAT specially seeing how they were Pakistani, and female. NOTHING has changed between me and them, (they do live in London though,). Their reaction was a surprise because ive known them since i was about 8 and grew up with them in pakistan, and i had no idea they would react so well. Shocker, really. We even check out guys together! hahah

My nephew im really close to - at 19 im quite close to him, nearly had me in tears, and was the first person i told. I dont know why, but i just blurted it out...sort of like "KAIS....IM GAY"

We were in my bedroom smoking a joint, and he was like Shit...Really? and i was like "Yep".... he was like "I still love you man...You're still my Uncle...Now, take a toke."

I very, nearly burst into tears.

How do you think your parents would deal with it if you were to come out?

Not well. I remember one time, i was laying on the bed on my mums room, as she watched TV, i was reading a book. I was about 12, out of the blue, she suddenly said "Bilal, you're not a 'poof' are you?" My blood ran cold, oh so very, very cold, i blurted out no, and went back to reading my book, my heart racing, and my palms all sweaty.

Im the only son. I have to take care of my mother (she is my parent). Believe it or not, my main fear is who is going to look after her if i dont. I mean sure, my sisters will be more than happy to do it, but its my responsibility - not theirs - they have their children to raise, their families to take care of - it would be unfair to my nephews and nieces to put such a strain on their mother.

I dont know. Really I dont.

You mention that you used to deny being gay,what was the turning point that actually made you accept you for who you are?

I started meeting gay people in London..they were normal. They were fun, they lived, they laughed, they breathed, they loved. Just not who other people expected them too.

We arent that different you and I..I realised, so i convinced myself to stop fighting myself, and just spend time just being myself!* * *

Such a brilliant way to end the interview...makes me feez fuzzy inside...and hopeful for the rest of the desi universe

"...I convinced myself to stop fighting myself, and just spend time being myself!"

* * *

Speaking of the desi universe...I've recently been exchanging emails with another delightfully interesting and eloquent desi gentleman...he goes by the name 'chatkhara' and he's actually written something about his own personal experience as a desi gay man for the blog:

Nowadays, my life is a walking hash tag. I walk around clunky problems by trapping them in a nifty hash tag that can be easily classified, shared, tossed, and duplicated. I'm referring to twitter, of course.

I think that the hash tag allows me to classify my problems, neatly and succinctly, as the elephant in the room that I can carefully avoid. A theoretical tweet of #gaymanproblems allows me to joke about the burdens of heteronormativity while not really talking about the issue. I package my unwieldy woes in a portmanteau of problems that might elicit a laugh. Everything becomes "that awkward moment when" X happened. Pause. Laugh. Scratch your ass. Tweet about something else. That's as far as it has gone for me. I'm just so disconnected from the moment.

Part of the fun of #gaymanproblems is that it also assumes that you can click on the twitter hyperlink and see other queer individuals categorizing their queer blunders in a homosexual rolodex.

What have fags tweeted about today? Let's click in and have a peek. To the victor(s), the successful writers of #gaymanproblems, go the spoils: RTs and follows. "Heartbreaking" they cry. Supporters rally to the sad tweets, chuckle to the outlandish ones. In a global age, where we are all affected by a hyperactive inability to limit private experiences qua private ONLY experiences, marketing strategies reign supreme. I hate the tweet, but boy do I love sharing the misery with others. I think "schadenfreude" directed at the self might be masochism. Whatever. Gotta love the melodrama.

Why am I writing this all? Enough with the wallowing. I love the support, but I'm just commenting on the frustration of publicizing the ephemera of my life into a block text that can easily be closed and abandoned by all those who have read it. Except me. That's my existence, and I just sidestep it with hash tags. Here is one such hash tag hammered out for today:

#Gaymanproblems: That moment when your insides burst on your best friend's birthday and you present her the present of your failed heterosexuality.

About two and an half years ago, I came out to my friend Zainab on her 23 birthday. We were new to the area and started a friendship after a strong acquaintance period launched two summers before in India. The shared experience of living abroad forges strong friendships and I was ecstatic when I learned that she was moving to the midwest for graduate school. I wouldn't be alone. Our friendship exploded into a sibling like closeness that the world should envy. The chemistry was incredible. She became my auto-predict text. To this day, she is my siamese twin. Half way across the world, I know she feels phantom pangs of pain when I'm keeling over in diarrhea due to a poorly received kebab, or embarrassment as I bob my head (the faux-gangster that I am) to Mosdef. I'm such a poseur(!), but that's another entry.

We go out for a celebratory birthday dinner, on me. We begin to gossip about an annoying girl in my cohort, Preet. Preet had been calling me frequently and hovering around me to the point that I started to dislike her. My passive aggression and avoidance didn't send her the indirect signal I had intended. Zainab casually suggested that she might like me.

And then they erupt, the fireworks inside. My stomach begins to convulse. Play it cool, self. Play it straight.

I don't really remember my vocal response to Zainab. I think I all but died, my last remaining words eaten in an uncomfortable chuckle. I was consumed by my own sheepish silence.

And so here we are enjoying middle eastern food in a restaurant. I've now gotten to know her for about a week and am excited to celebrate a monumental day together. But all the while, I'm consumed with the fear that I'm lying to her about my existence. I've performing straightness. I fidget uncomfortably in my seat wondering if she read the "FAG" bulliten written on my forehead.

I begin to feel selfish that I can't give her all of my attention, that I'm just so consumed with myself. My self-centeredness eats away at my core, as I watch my mind volley back and forth in its uncertainty. "Tell her! Don't tell her! Tell her, but not today! It's her birthday! Don't ruin today!" Moments like these are so intense for me, I often translate everything in my brain into the umpteen languages I know and focus on the structural irregularities of grammatical declensions rather than worry about the actual content I want to convey. And then I grow crazy. I imagine myself vomiting pee soup in the horror movie adaption of My So-Called Life. My head spins slowly, my eyes bulge, and Zainab slurps her diet coke, oblivious to what's transpiring in front of her. That's what anxiety does to me. Anxiety of myself. Anxiety of my unchosen, unrequited sexuality. I spin out of control, jumping from subject to subject, rationalizing, raging, imagining myself with 5 heads and a Samantha Steven's twitchable nose. I recreate myself with a swagger like Hrithik Roshan, hair like Mondo from Project Runway, and then before I know it class is over, the dinner check has come, and I haven't even savored the juicy story that my friend laughed out loud at for the last hour. I want to be anyone but myself.

Still, Zainab and I have a great dinner, from what I remember. And then in the parking lot, I lose it again. I start hyperventilating. It's interesting that in that very moment, two weeks shy of my 24th birthday, I did not associate my queerness with embarrassment. I wasn't embarrassed to be gay. I was happy in the closet and was able to joke out loud and be my salacious self with close friends who knew. But I still carried shame as an invisible, vestigial appendage of my upbringing, and shame has a mind of its own. It stops you from speaking. It makes your legs too heavy to lift. It takes your heart, cuts it off from the aorta, and tosses it the right side of your chest. My chest implodes on itself, my lungs collapse, and I have an outer-body experience as I see myself in fragments. Shame is what caused me to think that Zainab wouldn't like me anymore. That she'd be disgusted with me. The politics of high school make a cameo, it seems!

I walk anxiously to the car. The "me" I knew shrunk into a miniature version. He was now a walking, shame driven being.

But how did she not know? How couldn't she know? I depended on the fact that this was the foundation of the unspoken agreement of my friendship. I am gay and let's not talk about it. Could she be that oblivious?

The easiest way for me to out myself, I'm convinced, is to tell the world about my Ricky Martin obsession from the 7th grade. But somehow I never remember that one at the moment of Truth.

I can never, ever manage to actually get the words "I am gay" out by themselves. The words are too jagged on my tongue and I can't extract them from my insides without producing enough tears to irrigate a small desert. So I cheat. "I have something to tell you" is an incredibly easy statement to say, for some reason. "I have to talk to you about something" is too, and when I say these, I am setting myself up very well for the revelation. I almost feel like the other person can predict my topic of conversation. "Zainab, I'm gay," I blurted out. We were almost to the car, and I did the impossible. No going back now. Reality returned. Little Me resumed the wheel.

I now believe that the best response to the revelation of sexual orientation is nothing. Say nothing. Don't encourage the person to understand his/her secret as a magical revelation, a deal changer of sorts. Don't let their performance of trauma goad you into making orientation into something more than it is. It's nothing, a non issue. I am not my orientation. I am me.

Zainab's reaction was exactly that, and it might have been the best reaction I have ever received (queer individuals excluded). She responded with a perfunctory "oh." She may have even said "that's nice" or "thank you for telling me." I disremember these specifics, as I was more concerned with my miscalculation, my huge faux pas. I must have ruined her birthday.

I must have! What kind of a friend trumps the birthday girl with the fag card? Now her birthday will also be the day I came out to her. Forever. WTF. This is not cool, and I think I spent the next 20 minutes apologizing out loud and the next month in a perpetual face palm.

Zainab is persistent in convincing me that I did nothing of the sort, that she could care less if I was gay or not. Most importantly, I wasn't met with the sly but condescending "I knew it all along" remark that I anticipated. I wish I could have savored the moment, the surprise. Seen the reaction on my face as I realized I was naive to think my orientation could destroy my friendship and banish her 23rd birthday to some hellish corner.

Two and a half years later, this has all become a very funny joke. I'll call Zainab up every so often and come out to her on the phone, parodying my trepidation from that night. Now I'm finally laughing with myself at the joke instead of making myself the butt of the joke.

I'm not sure if I am ready for this next step, but the fact that I have taken to the quill to document my anxieties and unpack my own emotional history leads me to wonder if I need to out myself on my personal blog. To blog about everything in my life in one forum but restrict sexual and sexualized content that reveals my affinity to men (and questionable, problematic pull to women) is to perform a violent partition on my mental life. How Mountbatten of me. I already lead a bifurcated existence in so many ways and the odds that my family will discover this blog is next to nil. And if they do, what happens? So what, my moments of torture have an audience with several members that have had roles in my one act play. Maybe they'll remember when they called my "fag" as a five year old. Oh, wait, this isn't the place for that.

I'll just write and see what comes to my fingers. Please stay along for the road, reader. We can think together.

Ham saath saath sochen gay. Even my thoughts are gay.

* * *

Oh my...after reading that, I'm left feeling that my friend 'Chatkhara' has unfortunately led quite a tormented existence...in both Bilal and him there has been shame. Shame about something they didnt have any control over, something that is perfectly natural. Lets hope that because of people like these two, younger people will have things to read that mirror their experiences...homosexuality may not gain acceptance in desi-land overnight, but there is comfort in seeing that you're not alone and that there are others out there who face the same struggles. I won't say much more cuz there's already a lot to think about in this post.

You can read more of Chatkhara's musings here........or if u prefer, read that post here.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Being desi is hard enough..don't even get me started on that....but as we've been discussing...its pretty damn complicated, gut-wrenching, confusing... etc... to be gay and desi.

Our people are so judgemental as it is, and so afraid of anything that's different from 'the norm'...that its almost impossible to be accepted as a respectable member of Pakistani society unless you fit their mould to a tee. And despite being straight myself I've had a hard time being accepted by Pakistanis all my life. A couple of tattoos, a few piercings.... and in my younger days, hair that was every colour of the rainbow...excessive black eyeshadow, corsets...boots... bah these superficial things were what kept me kind of..uh 'separate' from the desi crowd...especially in university... where i was most 'expressive'...

.... i remember the desis would hang out in this one corner of the food court at our uni.... and every time i'd walk past there'd be whispers....and they'd say things like 'astaghfirullah', 'tobah tobah' ... assuming i didnt understand what they were saying....and if they didn't have that wtf, omg you're a devil-worshipping freak attitude, then they often treated me like i was an 'interesting specimen' ...asked me questions about my beliefs etc. I felt like I always had to defend my existence around other desis, or watch what I was saying, lest it be misinterpreted and held against me, simply because I chose to look different. For example, a desi aunty, who's own daughter was sleeping around town... told my mom to keep an eye on me because my interest in animals was unnatural... and she offered that perhaps I was sexually attracted to cats as an explanation for why I dressed so strangely.

Yeah.... you heard right.

This crazy bitch had the audacity to say that to my mom... and my mother promptly told her to shut the fuck up, in politer terms I'm sure - but, thats the kind of incident that punctuates my life from time to time... especially with desis.

And if people are not offering weird theories about why I'm so into dressing in black...they have often been interested in my 'quirkiness' for all the wrong reasons. Now unlike the other brownfolk at my school there was one character in my dorm who did want to befriend me, a seemingly sweet enough guy, from Islamabad.... He was always very interested in what I had to say, or what I was doing... a little too interested it seemed, but he was engaged and his fiance was also in our dorm... so I thought nothing of it. Till one day, on a routine visit to my room... this guy just outright said, "Hey if you ever have a guy spend the night in your room... do you mind if I come watch? That would really turn me on." And he wasn't joking, he was all seriousness. 'Course, people just say that kinda shit sometimes, or if you're really into watching people be intimate, then I assume you wouldn't bring it up so nonchalantly, with someone you don't know that well. But I was so weirded out - that I passed it off as a joke at the time...and quickly got him out of my room. He got weirder and creepier as time went on, the more I avoided him, the more he'd follow me around. When I started going out of my way to not talk to this guy, I started receiving weird pictures of myself in envelopes under my door. Pictures that were taken from far far away, from a height too...me leaving our dorm building, me bringing back food to the building with friends, etc. It just really creeped me the fuck out. Then finally after a long stretch of not seeing this guy for a while I saw him in the hall...ugh my skin crawled, something about the way he looked at me...he said..."so have you been getting my pictures?"

WHAT - THE - FUCK.....it was him all along, and I kinda knew it in the back of my mind too...but thought I was being paranoid. So he was telling me how he had got this crazy zoom lens and proceeded to describe how from his 12th floor dorm room he'd photograph me.... *shudder*

At that point, honestly, I was afraid...I just went cold. I ended the conversation...walked away... and didn't see him again, because it was the end of semester and I think he graduated then. Went back home to get married. I often thought of that poor girl he married...and how she prolly knew nothing about this stalker side of him.

But i got majorly sidetracked there.... My point is this, because for a lot of my life i've looked very different from the norm, I tend to bring out the crazy in people. Especially desi people...I have a wealth of stories I could bore you with, but I'll spare you for the time being. Right now I just want to say that I can seriously relate to feeling like an outsider, to feeling different from others...to being treated differently...to being cast out...Of course, how I feel is nothing in comparison to how a gay desi person feels. Sure I look different, people may whisper and say I'm a devil worshipper, blah blah...but they get over it. Though they are disgusted, they aren't completely and utterly scandalized like they are with homosexuality.

Plus, with age one outgrows these appearance based rebellions. The more mainstream my appearance becomes the more accepted i become. But you can never outgrow your sexual orientation...so what then? Its definitely a lifetime of struggling. Knowing that the second you show your true self, everyone you love could walk away from you.

Its slow, but people in the desi world are starting to speak up. There are websites, online forums, blog posts, etc. There are places for gay (desi) people to be heard. It can't be long till it trickles into the mainstream. This is how acceptance starts. We have to stop being afraid of things, beliefs, people - anything that's different from what we're used to. And the more people that are willing to talk about it, share their personal experiences, their stories - the more avenues it'll open up for those who live in fear.

No one should ever have to live in fear, or hate themselves.

I've gotta hand it to my next interviewee, It really takes a lot to open up when you're Gay and Pakistani. I hope this inspires other gay Pakistanis to be proud of who they are.

Bilal, 24, Male

At what age (approximately) and how did you come to know about sexual intercourse?

I think i was about 10/11, when my interest was piqued by a sex scene in a movie with Bruce Willis...my mother shouted out “FORWARD THE SEX SCENE”, so the next day when no one was home, i played the sex scene over again in slow motion. Then i looked it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica..this was pre-internet days mind you, so that was my only source of information, and boy, did they have some detailed diagrams of human anatomy.

At first i was sightly shocked, then disgusted, after a little while it began to interest me so much so that if any film had a good “scene” in it, i would hunt out an opportunity to watch it by myself.

Is Pakistan sexually repressed as a nation?

God yes! It was a taboo subject when i was a teenager, and amongst the teens of Pakistan today, it still seems to be. Let me tell you this, guys conversations in Pakistan have ALOT more homosexual overtones than Ive ever seen in my life. I suppose when you cant act as openly with the opposite gender, it leads to a such circumstances.

A girl who had sex with a guy was instantly labelled a slut, whilst the guy a hero, that i never understood quite frankly, and still don't, and this view i think, sort of stems from the above dilemma. If they didn't make such a big deal about sex it would hardly be an event of any particular noteworthiness

Have you ever had/Do you enjoy having sex?

Yes, wasn't so great the first time though - I was thinking way to much about it. After that it become much more enjoyable, it was more about about responding to my partner, then being expected to do something - Without getting too graphic it all about counter acts rather than thinking about what would be enjoyable.

On premarital sex:

I'm a live and let live kind of guy - i see no particular harm in it at all, as long as you know what you are getting into, and you know its right. Sure, i frown upon one night stands, but that's only when it comes to me. People are different, if you can handle it, then i say go for it!

On Arranged Marriage:

Doubt this really applies to me, for obvious reasons - but here is my 2 cents on arranged marriages - They have just as much of chance of success and failure as do love marriage - it depends entirely on the people getting married and what they make of it.

As for its effect on sexuality, there is no doubt that in places like Pakistan, many a gay man has probably married a woman instead of coming out to their family.

I however, have no such intention (of getting married that is - to a woman at least anyway), i don't know how I’ll tell my family, but God help me when the time comes.

Have you had more than one sexual partner in life?

No more than two

On Sex & Equality:

Difficult one to answer .You can try and make it pleasurable for your partner, and you will succeed most of the time, which results (in my limited opinion) in great sex. Id like to think of it as a sort of natural selection - If you have good sex, you stick around, if not you move on and find someone you enjoy having sex with and vice versa.

But then again, good sexual compatibility isn't always the basis for a good relationship.

And i think Ive somehow missed the point of this question completely! But there you go!

What do you think nature and the physical differences between men and women have to do with gender roles in society?

I was born in a very matriarchal family, so my perceptions on gender are rather skewed - In my opinion there are no reasons why women cant do stuff men can - the obvious things that pop into mind are “Oh But men are generally stronger” ( the standard Pakistani response). The only limitation that exist are the ones that society put on you,

Have you ever experienced a multiple orgasm?

Is that even possible for men? Im not the One and done kinda guy, but id imagine for men, its more the intensity of the orgasm than the number.

Do you know anyone who has sex but has not yet experienced an orgasm? What are your thoughts on that?

Although i don't know anyone like this personally, i have heard of it happening, and to be honest I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

Do you think about sex everyday?

Initially id like to say not really, but its always lurking there, in my subconscious

Do you think sex plays a major role in your life?

No, its not central to it. For some reason id think i was a very shallow person if it did.

On Masturbation:

I quite enjoy it - there seems to be a unfortunate amount of negativity associated with it, even though it has somewhat decreased somewhat recently. Unless its getting in the way of your sex life, there shouldn't be a problem

Would you morally, ethically or in any way, have a problem with marrying someone who had had sex with someone before you?

Nope. Everyone has a past. It might be difficult to deal with it, but you got to.

On Pornography:

Healthy in small doses, Can be quite addictive, and set up false expectations. As long as you remember there is whole lot more to sex than “Wham Bam, thank you ma’am” , enjoy it!

To what extent, in comparison with the rest of the world, do you think people practice bestiality (sex with animals) in this country?

Oh god. Really? No.. I wasn’t really aware of any such practices.

As far as sex lives are concerned, do you ever wonder what other people in this country are doing and what do u think they are doing?

I have rarely wondered how other peoples sex live are going – the married friends I know, however, seem to have no problem sharing this information with me for some reason…(Maybe I just have one of those trusting faces).In general however, id say there is definitely more to it than meets the eye – especially because its such a hugely taboo topic!

What are your thoughts on homosexuality?

Its natural as heterosexuality. I honestly don’t believe you can be turned gay, nor do I believe it’s a product of nurture. I just honestly wished my family saw it the same way. Id like to think they would want me to be happy, but it’s not likely that they will accept me

Do you think education is important, when it comes to something like sexuality?

Definitely - it would make coming out for me so much easier. Most of the the Pakistani community are stuck with images of old stereotypes when it comes to sexuality - the effeminate gay man, the butch lesbians, the in-denial bisexuals - and even though these stereotype are alive an well in the global gay community, that's not the all there is! I use to deny being gay for the same reason - i couldn't be gay - i wasn't effeminate in the least bit, so i how could i be gay?

It wasnt till i moved to London that i realised you don't have to be girly to be gay, and slowly started accepting myself.

Long story short - if the community were educated and stopped all the stereotyping, LGBT folk would have a much easier time.

* * *

On a side note: you all must think I look like a serious freak now eh? hahah no no.... not really... but believe me just having blue hair is enough to scare off the aunties and uncles. But most of that was in the past, I have definitely toned it down... but every now and then I still like to rock a corset ;)

* * *

As for the interview, *sigh* Bilal is someone that I personally found very inspiring. He truly captured my imagination. I certainly wasn't done with him yet. A man comfortable with his sexuality...better yet, a Pakistani man..comfortable with his 'alternative' sexuality. Do you know how hard that is to come across? Of course I wanted to pick his brain a bit more...

About Me

I'm a Pakistani-Canadian illustrator/blogger who writes and draws about sexuality in South Asia (mostly Pakistan), religion, politics, feminism, godlessness.
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